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Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas: In honor of John V. Singler
Edited by Cecelia Cutler, Zvjezdana Vrzić and Philipp Angermeyer
[Creole Language Library 53] 2017
► pp. 101–122

Creole as necessity? Creole as choice?

Evidence from Afrikaans historical sociolinguistics

John Singler (2006) encourages linguists to consider speaker agency in the genesis of pidgin/creole languages. I take my cue from his suggestion and consider the role of speaker agency in the history of Afrikaans, focusing on the Afrikaans negation (nie-2). I show that the social indexicality, and indeed iconicity, of nie-2 is the result of discursive nationalist-ideological work which associated this variant with the emphatic and decisive voice of the Afrikaner boer – an important symbolic figure at the time – and was thus able to disassociate it from the speech of people of colour (where it was the dominant variant). Based on this language-ideological work, nie-2 was adopted by young Afrikaner nationalists and diffused into the emerging (white) standard norm.

Keywords: Afrikaans, negation, indexicality, iconicity, agency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Learning more about language
  • 2.Trudgill’s challenge: Who needs identity?
  • 3.The trouble with the Afrikaans negation
  • 4.Iconicity in language: Form and meaning
  • 5.Ideological work: Shaping the voice of the Afrikaner boer
  • 6.Ideological practice: Speaking like an Afrikaner boer
  • 7.Conclusion: Language is – at least sometimes – choice
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.53.05due
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